Computer Problem Home, kinda long.

I had a local guy do some work on my computer and now he seems to be stuck. I had nothing but problems with xp. It would not run older games messed up on the D.S.L. You name it. To try and solve the problem this guy loaded ME on the one hard drive 80 gig and added a second hard drive 80 gig. on the second hard drive is windows 98 to use with all my games and controllers. The problem is that when the computer starts up it goes to ME and he cant at this point get the computer to switch over to the other hard drive with out manually changing the hookups. The computer shows both the hard drives when he checked it. Any ideas? I really need this to work or I will have to get rid of all the games I like! Any help ideas thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Tim

What games don't run on ME that run on 98? If indeed your games don't run on ME, why keep ME, just run 98.

In order to run both of these OS's you will need a 3rd party piece of software to manage the 2 OS's such as such as Boot Magic.

Start by reading this article.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/russel_september10.mspx

As stated, if you want to fix it now you need a 3rd party boot manager.

If you want to do it right the first time, you install downlevel operating systems first, then install XP. The XP install will see the other operating systems and automagically setup it's boot manager to deal with it.

I'm not sure if XP Home has a boot manager.

Only WinNT, Win2k and WinXP come with a boot manager.

I have CART Racing II; Jet Fighter II - III - Fullburn; Motorcycle racing games; and other great games but they are for 95 or 98. Very few of my older games will work with XP, if they do then the games are written to have a sound card at IRQ5 Port220 and XP generally is on puters that have onboard sound. So you sometimes get the games to VISUALLY work, but you have no sound and thus no game port for your joystick/rudders or wheel/pedals. Welcome to the sucky world of "Technology Improvements" What I did was install XP on my primary HD, but I also had a 60 gig as a backup drive (Secondary). I previously had Win98 on this secondary drive and never formatted it, so after installing XP on the primary it would first pop up a boot option with XP as the default, unless I chose 98 before so many seconds elapsed. Not sure how I got it to do that, but if you install XP OVER the ME drive then when you boot XP will ask if you "want to boot XP or 98?", HOPEFULLY.
Another option is to pickup an old PII for $50 and buy a switcher that all of your mouse, keyboard, sound, joystick, monitor, etc plug into, and with a switch of a button you are running off the PII. My dad has this as he switches from work computer to his personal computer instantly.

Have you guys tried going into the properties and clicking run as win 98 in xp? Xp has an option that you can run older softwasre if you click that tab, your choices are win 95,win 98, and win me. So XP should be able to run all your sopftware, i have never had a problem with it.

Tyler

Thanks for all your help guys. I can upgrade the ME to XP I have a upgrade dics. It seems that if I do that I can easily choose what hard drive I want to run on. On the plus side the hard drive that was origionally on the computer was 80 at 5000 rpms. This new second one is at 7200 that should help some.

Just make sure you read all the questions when installing and don't put the new operating system in the same folder as the existing system.

The faster drive will help, assuming your computer's ATA interface will support the bus speed of that faster drive. 7200rpm are usually ATA133, there are still a lot of older pc's that are ATA100 or less.

Like Mike said, if the XP is not "Professional Edition" and only "Home Edition" it may not offer such a boot option. I have "XP Professional" and have only delt with "XP Home" on my aunts and moms computers.

I just checked google. XP Home supports multi-boot. Note that it doesn't support the encrypted file system. Only really an issue for someone mounting up a XP Professional drive into a XP home machine.

so does anyone have any idea what im talking about then? thre really is no need to run 2 OS's

Tyler

I think I understand you. I really am not much on the computer thing, thats why I had this guy put the second hard drive on.

ok in XP when your going to yoru program/game that you wanna use, you right click on the .exe of the said name file,
then right click/properties/compatabilty, you will then see the tabs that you will need to use, says "run this program in compatipilty mode for" win 95 win me win2000 win98 etc.

Tyler

Stay away from Windows ME.
Too buggy and unstable.
It's the "Edsel" of Microsofts operating systems.
I went from '98 2nd ed. to ME, couldn't stand it...back to '98 2nd ed.
(Now I run XP Professional...not one problem, glitch or hiccup in over 3 years).

nothing wrong with "ME"

windows ME is Windows 98 only with more more drivers and menu items. Widows 98 was designed for slower computers,with speed and complexaties of newer computers. the operating system counldn't "stay together" like trying to get a 3.8 to make power at 6000 rpm! XP is a 3.8 SC it will live all day at 6000 rpm and make huge power ,in comparision.